“Polar amplification” usually refers to greater climate change near the pole compared to the rest of the hemisphere or globe in response to a change in global climate forcing, such as the concentration of greenhouse gases (GHGs)…RealClimate [emphasis added]

*****

It’s fall. The Arctic is trying to cool down, but what would typically be a steady decline into frigid temperatures is being held back by the increasingly strong hand of human-forced climate change.

(Over recent weeks, temperature departures above the 1958-to-2002 average line [green line above] have grown in the region north of the 80th parallel. In general, the Arctic has experienced much warmer than normal temperatures. Failure of the Arctic to rapidly cool down during fall has been a feature of recent years that is related to human-forced climate change. Image source: DMI.)

Over the past month, temperature anomalies for the entire Arctic have ranged near 3 degrees Celsius or more above average. These temperatures appear to have represented the highest departures from average for any world region for the past month. Overall, they’ve greatly contributed to what is likely to be another record hot month globally.

Into the first week of October, this trend is expected to intensify. By Friday, according to GFS model runs, temperatures above the 66° North Latitude line are expected to range near 4.5 C (8 degrees Fahrenheit) above average for the entire region. Meanwhile, areas of Greenland, the Arctic Ocean and Northeastern Siberia are expected to see 10-18 C (18 to 32 F) above-average temperature departures for the day.

(Extreme Arctic heat is likely to lead record-high global temperatures for the month of September. Such heat is also likely to help push October into top 3 record-hot month ranges. Image source: Climate Reanalyzer.)

It doesn’t need to be said that these are extraordinary warm temperature departures from normal, which represent near-record or record warm ranges for many locations, but this is what we would expect with human-forced climate change. As the sun falls in the Arctic sky and night lengthens, energy transfer in the form of heat coming in from the warming ocean and atmosphere intensifies. This effect is driven by what is now a great overburden of greenhouse gasses in the Earth’s atmosphere.

(August 2016 was the hottest month on Earth in all of the past 136 years. Though the Earth is cooling into fall, September 2016 looks like it will be the hottest September ever recorded. Overall, 2016 is on track to be the hottest year on record by a significant margin. Image source: Earth Observatory.)

Temperatures in these ranges would represent the hottest September on record by a pretty big margin (about 0.13 C globally). Meanwhile, the annual averages for the first nine months of the year would hit near 1.27 C above 1880s averages if the NASA measure saw a warming similar to that showing up in Stokes’s early NCEP/NCAR reanalysis figures — a measure disturbingly close to the 1.5 C departure levels that represent the first major global climate threshold, a level that many scientists have advised us we’d be wise to avoid.

Paul PNW

JPL

Because Donald Trump, who slipped the draft four times, could handle it, right? I just love how these guys who never served talk about how vets can’t handle it. Way to support our military there, Trump. You know, the real military, the living, breathing people who actually wear the uniform and go to work every day so that people like Trump can still have the right to say any ridiculous thing they want to…

coloradobob

The Monarch Butterfly is in Danger of Extinction – Here’s What You Can Do to Help

The population of monarch butterflies has taken a substantial drop over the past few decades – a devastating 96.5 percent to be exact. This has placed monarchs in danger of moving toward extinction, something that will cause a negative impact on the ecosystems in which butterflies play an important role.

I have been growing swan plants which the Monarchs caterpillars eat and grow on and now am collecting the seeds and spreading them around reserves in the locality. I get plenty of caterpillars and chrysalis very quickly.

The polar amplification is very troubling with regard to the various tipping points in the far north. I don’t think people get this at all when they talk about how we need to decarbonize our economy in the next few decades. I think we should be addressing this problem as if our hair is on fire, which is sorta is.

Cate

That happened here in the boreal forest once, in the hot dry summer of 1961, the “summer of the forest fires” when it seemed like the whole island was ablaze. In one area, fires burned down into the peat to smoulder all winter under the snow and were not finally put out until the following spring.

coloradobob

An unusual area of extra spin and low pressure that has been embedded on the east side of Matthew’s circulation for days is generating intense rains in excess of one inch per hour, as seen on microwave imagery (Figure 1.) A portion of this feature rotated ashore over southern Haiti and the Dominican Republic early Monday morning, and the mountainous terrain of this region undoubtedly caused additional uplift that resulted in rainfall rates much higher than one inch per hour. A personal weather station in Cabo Rojo, on the southern coast of the Dominican Republic near the border with Haiti, recorded 20.05” of rain in eleven hours between 3 am and 2 pm on Monday, including a remarkable 5.33″ in the hour from 6 am to 7 am. While PWS data is often suspect, these are believable rainfall amounts based on the satellite presentation of Matthew.

coloradobob

Category 5 Super Typhoon Chaba threatening Japan, South Korea
Previously a Category 5 itself, Matthew has a Category 5 cousin over the Northwest Pacific today: Super Typhoon Chaba, which passed just south of Okinawa early Monday. Chaba intensified into a 165 mph Category 5 storm with a central pressure of 905 mb on Monday morning, becoming Earth’s sixth Category 5 storm of the year. The planet averages about 4 – 5 Cat 5’s per year, so we are above average for the third year in a row. Both 2015 and 2014 had nine Category 5 storms, tied for the second most on record (the record was twelve, set in 1997.)

Ryan in New England

Cate I know exactly what you mean. I’m a little further south than you but here in Ct we’ve been having some seriously warm nights. I still hear my neighbors using their air conditioners…in October. Some nights are as warm as what we should expect in the middle of summer.

wili

Yeah, I saw that over at neven’s site just a bit earlier and had to do a double take. It’s like the temperature is just wandering off into some other realm completely disconnected with all previous historical norms.

it is odd and unsettling. I planted trees and did other forestry work in northern ontario in the early 90s and we had frost in late August, snow squalls in September, frozen in October, and -30C in early November once. Looking at the forecast for Timmins it looks like winter is at least a month late this year.

Griffin

Some folks may be interested in this climate discussion tonight.
“7:00 PM: President Obama in Conversation with Leonardo DiCaprio and Dr. Katharine Hayhoe (Innovation Stage)”https://www.whitehouse.gov/sxsl

Ryan in New England

Here’s a Guardian article that showcases some of the progress that’s been made in solar and wind installation, as well as the dramatic decrease in price for renewables. It’s a bit of good news, as opposed to the usual grim reports we’ve become so accustomed to.

Saw that, but elected not to tweet. I don’t like the headline, and it wasn’t adequately supported by the article, IMHO. Nuccitelli has been doing some excellent stuff, but this one would have benefited from a more serious showing of what it will take to deploy the technologies–which are indeed making rapid advances–quickly enough at sufficient scale to avoid drastic climate change.

True enough – ask Kevin Anderson – it is not the cost per se of these technologies, but the time required for totally rebuilding our energy infrastructure.

As for Carbon Capture and Storage (CCS) – this will require the processing and storage of gigatons of material annually, to be meaningful. Our civilisation / industrial society has never handled anything on this scale before – it is larger than the coal industry, larger than the oil industry – an incredible infrastructure requirement(time to implement, again). On top of that, CCS from power plants reduces the efficiency of these plants – a large percentage of the power produced by a plant trying for CCS goes to the CCS process itself – reducing the net energy available for distribution. Energy loss is on the order of 25% – 30%!

Mulga Mumblebrain

Ryan, the progress in solar and wind IS encouraging, but undue optimism is, in my opinion, as dangerous as pessimism. We have already put too much greenhouse gases into the atmosphere, so as well as ceasing to do so as soon as humanly possible (not as fast as the Holy Market dictates)we must find ways to remove the excess. I favour restoration of biomass, through massive reforestation, restoration of grasslands, sea-grass meadows, mangroves etc, and the animal wildlife that goes with them, and biochar to improve soil fertility and safely sequester carbon. And we must not forget that anthropogenic climate destabilisation is just one of the worst of a plethora of ecological catastrophes caused by neoplastic capitalism and its growth fetish. We need another way of organising the economy and society, not just tinkering with the mechanism.

Shawn Redmond

Ryan in New England

You “guys” are all correct, it isn’t nearly enough…yet. Even when I hear numbers suggesting 90% of all new power generation installed is renewables (heard Al Gore say this on a recent podcast, sorry I don’t have a link) what I really hear is that we are STILL expanding and increasing fossil fuel powered systems. We are still exploring for new reserves, still building coal fueled power plants, still running nearly all planes, trucks and cars on oil, still sinking new wells for fracking (and poisoning precious water supplies permanently), still expanding the tar sands operations and building new pipelines, and corporations and governments are looking to the soon to be ice free Arctic for the next generation of oil/gas extraction, salivating at the possibility of obtaining previously inaccessible reserves.

What’s worse is that the problem is all but ignored by the media and most of the general public (and half of those paying attention think it’s a “hoax”!). We are about to elect the POTUS who will likely have the largest effect of any president in regards to our future climate. This president, more than any before or after, has the ability to change our trajectory towards a rapid transition to renewables just in time to save civilization, or to seal our fate with severe climate disruption by (as Trump has promised to do) ignoring the Paris agreement, eliminating the EPA and regulations and doubling down on fossil fuel extraction/use. Hillary doesn’t look to be our clean energy savior by any means, but she’s a hell of a lot better than the pathetic man-child charlatan Trump. So this is a crucial election concerning climate change…and the problem isn’t even mentioned!

I’ve been following Robert for years now, and I am aware of just how dire the situation is. I’ve been absent from the comments for a while (volunteering my spare time to help ensure Trump gets nowhere near the White House) but have done my best to stay up to date on recent events/developments. Every day I think about how we aren’t doing nearly enough to avoid a collapse later this century. Every day I get depressed about how far down this path we’ve come, a path that we can’t just turn around and walk back on.

I guess I’m grabbing on to any good news or glimmer of hope. I keep hoping for the best while working to avoid the worst. As long as we’re alive and there’s still a chance of changing we have to try.

Correct, the “percentage of new capacity” numbers don’t mean much as long as there’s a huge overhang of installed fossil-fueled capacity emitting away. They’re meant to be positive talking points and encourage more, just need to be taken with grain of salt.

You need to have 100 percent + renewables installed. In effect, you need enough renewables to cover new installations plus rapidly replace existing fossil fuel infrastructure. Something on the order of net 110 or 120 even when accounting for efficiencies.

That said, there’s a bit of a trade off going on now that coal plants are being shut down at a pretty rapid rate (faster than the rate of replacement currently). This trend needs to be strengthened and to run across all fossil fuel sectors — not just coal.

In total, even with strong efficiency gains and minding energy consumption wisely, you need about 250 to 400 gw of new renewable energy capacity each year to both handle the energy replacement and/or growth rate and to take down the fossil fuel generation rapidly enough to have a shot at significantly reducing warming this Century.

With regards to increasing atmospheric carbon uptake. You absolutely can do some of that by reforestation and forest management and we should absolutely be doing that in conjunction with an energy transition. There’s a hand in glove kind of situation here in that if you don’t transition to renewables and reduce fossil fuel consumption fast enough, then it becomes very difficult to produce a strong positive carbon benefit by land management and reforestation efforts because the heat that comes from fossil fuel burning hits the forests and newly well managed lands very hard — reducing their capacity to take in carbon. So there needs to be a synergistic approach.

miles h

even if Al Gore is correct and 90% of all NEW power generation is renewables, we need to ask what % of all power generation is NEW? and how long will the overall transition take if it proceeds at that rate.
not only do we need 100% of new generation capacity to be renewable, we also need the rate of replacement of old power generation to be very high, otherwise Gore’s headline figure paints a misleadingly optimistic scenario.

wharf rat

The Donald J. Trump Foundation has been ordered to immediately stop fundraising after the New York attorney general’s office determined Donald Trump’s eponymous charitable organization had been soliciting donations without certification, The Washington Post reports.

The cease and desist was sent to the foundation Friday. In New York state, registration is required for charities that solicit more than $25,000 a year from the public; the foundation has spent 2016 aggressively fundraising for veterans’ groups.

Ryan in New England

Beyond The Bahamas: landfall threat for Southeast U.S. increasing
A significant westward shift in computer model guidance on Hurricane Matthew has occurred, and this could have big implications for the hurricane’s potential impact on the U.S. East Coast. The main reason appears to be stronger ridging south of 98L and north of Matthew than earlier predicted, which may help to nudge Matthew far enough west for major impacts along the Southeast U.S. coast. Last night’s 50 ensemble runs from the 00Z Monday European model included a number of tracks making landfall along the U.S. East Coast. Most concerning is that, for the first time in Matthew’s life, all four members of the Euro “high-probability” cluster–the members that most closely match the operational run–depict Matthew making landfall on Florida’s East Coast. (The 12Z Monday run of the NAM model also depicts the stronger ridge and suggests a Florida landfall, but the NAM is not designed to handle tropical cyclones and should be avoided for hurricane prediction, unless perhaps you’re Bart Simpson.)

Lending further credence to the westward shift are the latest 12Z Monday operational runs of our other two top track models, the GFS and UKMET. The 12Z UKMET brings Matthew into the East Coast of Florida, while the GFS brings Matthew considerably closer to the Florida coast than earlier runs, with a projected landfall in northern South Carolina this weekend (see Figure 4 below) and a second landfall on Cape Cod less than 36 hours later. The several previous operational GFS runs had suggested that a Southeast landfall would be limited to the NC Outer Banks at most. Likewise, the 12Z Monday GFS ensembles (GEFS) now include a majority of runs making landfall somewhere between Florida and North Carolina, a major shift west from previous GFS ensembles. In addition, the 12Z Monday run of the HWRF model is tracking about 1 degree (roughly 60 miles) west of its previous two runs, now showing a potential landfall in eastern North Carolina by late Friday.

Griffin

Hopefully Matthew finds his way and heads out to sea like a good young man. If there are impacts, it will be a good way to see if we have progressed past the point of “no way to attribute any one storm to climate change blah blah blah”. Let’s face it, there is no way to tease out the higher oceanic heat content currently off the East coast. It is there, it is warm and it is definitely exacerbated by our current earth energy imbalance. There is also no way to eliminate the fact that the areas threatened are those that have seen notable increases in local sea level. Yes, there has also been subsidence along the coast but there is no denying that any storm surge will be enhanced by sea level rise attributed to AGW.
Hurricanes are natural occurrences, but our energy imbalance gives them more to work with in terms of moisture, heat and sea surface level. Those are some pretty big factors in the storms favor. Dry air and shear may win the day and keep the storm at bay but eventually we will have loaded the dice strongly against the continued dreamworld of coastal living with no consequences such as we have seen in many area’s of the eastern seaboard post-war.

Ryan in New England

There’s a large segment of the population that will remain in denial no mater what. There’s literally nothing that could happen that would make them accept anthropogenic climate change as reality.

Here in Ct our shoreline communities were devastated by Hurricane Irene in 2011, and then again in 2012 by Hurricane Sandy. There were many who were still rebuilding from Irene when Sandy wiped them out again. Nothing changed. Except that the homeowners who could afford to raised their homes 10-15 feet off the ground. I bet if you asked, most people in my state couldn’t even tell you when those storms hit. They’ve already forgotten.

Right after Irene we had an unprecedented October snowstorm that dumped 20 inches of wet snow on still-green trees, causing the largest power outage we’ve ever seen in Ct. Many towns had 90-100% of their residents without power. Some didn’t regain power for weeks. Everyone forgot.

The Winter of 2013 (not long after Sandy) we had an unprecedented snowstorm that dumped over 3 feet across the state. Snowfall totals in some places were double the previous record! The storm had record warm ocean waters to feed on, which led to the off-the-charts snowfall. People forgot.

I have a feeling that no matter what we see, there will be those who are totally oblivious to the reality all around them.

So I think there’s some hope. My father was pretty doubtful for a time and has since turned toward concern. My uncle in law is a Trump supporter, but he’s less and less doubtful about climate change. Probably due to the lawsuit that’s now ongoing against Exxon shedding some light for him.

The issue is that though there are some people who won’t change now, it doesn’t mean they can’t change later. Part of respecting a person’s dignity is allowing them to make their own choices while having the fortitude to remain assertive. In other words, you can’t control what’s in others’ minds and thoughts — just give them every opportunity to make the right choice.

My view is that Sandy did have an impact as did Katrina and Irene and Arctic sea ice melt. Each factor puts a straw on the camel’s back. So I do think an abnormal hurricane that stayed strong as a major hurricane far longer than has ever happened in the Atlantic due to record warm ocean waters and one that generated a big hit to the US east coast would change a few minds. That said, I can’t find myself hoping for such an instance. There are a boatload of vulnerable homes all up and down the coast, moreso due to sea level rise. And a storm that essentially sideswiped hundreds of miles of coastline as a powerful hurricane would generate a pretty ridiculous impact. I don’t think I want to see that. I’d honestly rather people not need these wake up calls at all.

Would such an event be a sea change in the climate debate? Unlikely. But it would be one more straw added to the growing pile of extreme events that have some link or another to climate change. In this case a storm being more powerful than it would otherwise be due to excess ocean heat and atmospheric moisture loading. One that generates a storm surge made worse by sea level rise that’s already impacting so much of the US East Coast.

coloradobob

I absolutely understand why anyone in their right mind would have wanted to stay out of that quagmire. It’s just that for someone to pretend like he’s some tough guy, to turn a callous shoulder away from vets who endured the hell of real war and bear very real mental scars as if they were some kind of a sissy while avoiding any kind of real public service oneself is what’s unconscionable here. These people served their country with dignity and bore the very real harms as a result. Yet Trump just can’t resist the urge to bully the soldiers who stood on the front line and have come back bearing the worst kinds of spiritual scars. Heartless hind doesn’t even begin to describe someone who would puff themselves up by victimizing victims.

coloradobob

Andy_in_SD

Actually I read what the guy said, I think he was taken out of context. I don’t support him, but this election cycle has forced one to really distrust headlines and single sources. Sad, none of it is news, it’s all shock flavored product designed to move advertising. Plenty of headlines about both of them that really stretch credulity.

“When you talk about the mental health problems, when people come back from war and combat, they see things that maybe a lot of the folks in this room have seen many times over. And you’re strong and you can handle it, but a lot of people can’t handle it,” the Republican presidential nominee told an audience of military veterans at an event in Northern Virginia on Monday morning. “And they see horror stories, they see events that you couldn’t see in a movie — nobody would believe it.”

You’re right. Probably taken out of context. But given Trump’s past statements, I think some of Trump’s language tends to generate knee-jerk reactions. It’s not that the guy has built himself up as the paragon of sensitivity. And all the talk about walls and scape-goating Mexicans and being sued by the DOJ for refusing housing to African Americans and pandering to white supremacists and kicking people out of their homes to build a golf course and basically swindling people out of money in return for ‘training courses’ and promoting policies related to racial profiling and all the reasonable suspicion surrounding misuse of charitable donations into a charity that Trump is supposed to be using to help veterans makes people generally more sensitive to what Trump does say. So, even when it’s innocuous, in that context — the context that Trump has created for himself — it can look rather off.

“You’re right. Probably taken out of context. But given Trump’s past statements, I think some of Trump’s language tends to generate knee-jerk reactions. It’s not that the guy has built himself up as the paragon of sensitivity.”

Funny, I said something like that earlier today on FB:

“Candidates’ words are always massively scrutinized and often distorted (remember Hillary “putting coal miners out of work”). On the plus side [why his supporter like him], Trump’s not managed in such a way as to minimize this. On the minus side, he’s going to keep taking it on the chin. Kind of like his decision to not bother with much debate prep.”

Kalypso

Is there a chance Matthew could make landfall in southern New England as a major hurricane? Watching the weather, it seems that there is high pressure over the Atlantic preventing Matthew from going out to sea, is there a link between that high pressure and the abnormally warm Arctic?

Possible given how warm SSTs are off the US East Coast currently and given how much available moisture is just ripe for the picking along Matthew’s projected path. Not showing up in the NHS summaries yet. But some of the model runs look a bit rough.

kay

Because global warming is such a pressing problem, I thought many of you would be interested in voting on debate questions at https://presidentialopenquestions.com
for the next Presidential debate. It’s really important that it’s discussed at the debate.

Jay M

Kalypso

Matthew has now been a major hurricane for over 72 hours, and has had winds of at least 140 mph for a much of that time. CWG’s tropical analyst Phil Klotzbach points out that this is the longest we’ve had such a strong storm in the Atlantic Ocean on record:

Sheri

September in Phoenix wad a little cooler than normal our nights have cooled down very nicely and monsoon humidity is gone. It makes me fearfulnto read how things are still so warm at night in these comments above.

I am very amxious–curious?– to see how our winter plays out, if wr can still call it that. Our last 2 winters-+2015 and 2016–came to abrupt ends in February. I wonder if that means Jan this year. My heart sinks when I think of what 2017 brings.

coloradobob

coloradobob

In the summer of 1968, television news changed forever. That year, gunmen assassinated both Robert Kennedy and Martin Luther King, Jr. The Democratic convention in Chicago flared up with protests and violence. Overseas, the Vietnam War raged on, and the streets at home roiled with race riots. With this tense political climate as a backdrop, Best of Enemies captures the legendary televised debates between ideological opposites Gore Vidal and William F. Buckley, Jr.http://www.pbs.org/independentlens/films/best-of-enemies/

Griffin

Hi everyone – been following this blog for years; I’m a great fan of RS’ well-written contributions and the enthusiasm and wealth of information contributed by the readers. Thought I’d start contributing the odd bit too, so here another guardian reference, titled “Planet at its hottest in 115,000 years thanks to climate change”, regarding a new paper by James Hansen::

“There’s a misconception that we’ve begun to address the climate problem,” said Hansen, […]. “This misapprehension is based on the Paris climate deal where governments clapped themselves on the back but when you look at the science it doesn’t compute, it’s not true.”

Cate

“The paper, submitted as a discussion paper to the Earth System Dynamics journal, is a departure from the usual scientific process as it has yet to be peer reviewed and has been launched to support a legal case waged by a group of young people against the US government…..
Mann added that Hansen’s paper is “interesting” but tackles a huge range of topics and is unconventional in its use as a tool to support a legal case.”

Ailsa

Cate

Satellites, instruments, and models can only tell so much. Nothing beats eye-witness reports for impact. This comment on methane seeps came through my FB scroll-feed:

“I live in Alaska and contribute to the Arctic Research Consortium of the U.S. – we’ll not have a “burp”. It’s outgassing all over as we speak and will simply increase in rate with each passing year. I have reports from Yupik of boating through waters that were “boiling” in every direction while out hunting for seals (where they should have been using dogs and sledges)…The boats sink a few inches due to the difference in water density … crazy times…”

Apologies if the commenter recognises their words here, which I have used without permission. Everyone should be hearing this.

Ryan in New England

Abel Adamski

I read (cant find the article) where recent research in the Arctic is showing that where surface permafrost melt and grasses start growing they actually draw up methane from the deeper permafrost and expel it through their leaves.

Terrifying is the word.
I have tried to find a SWERUS update that gives some actual quantitative information, but haven’t come up with much. I did come across one article that concerned a small slice that gave a comforting result. The dichotomy in all these reports is very worrying. Personal experiences from all over show methane ranging from small bubbles to kilometers wide plumes erupting just about everywhere, it seems, dragon’s breath outliers and what not, yet when any actual quantitative information, including satellite data, comes out, the results are not very worrisome. I find it hard to imagine that such quantitative figures are all that hard or expensive, CARVE for example, but certainly I can’t easily find them. Makes keeping up quite interesting.

Syd Bridges

Whatever happened to “the Pause?” Or “the Hiatus” for that matter? Where are the usual suspects, explaining that this isn’t happening? Have they run into the buzz saw of Reality? Perhaps the Kochs have enough money (they certainly have enough whores in Congress for the task) to create a “Potemkin World” of blissful fossil fuel consumption.

The refreeze has been very rapid this year in the Arctic, but I wonder whether the main effect of that will be to trap more heat under the ice, thus setting us up for a record melt-out next year. CB is right; Hell will soon be coming to breakfast.

Cate

“….. Rachel Notley is charming too. She’s putting a (modest) price on carbon, and she’s consulting more with affected communities—surely that will be enough to satisfy those pesky environmentalists and in return provide the “social license” necessary for more pipelines. But math is immune to spin. Physics doesn’t care about whether Alberta’s NDP is greener than the Wild Rose party, not if Alberta is still planning to increase emissions in the tar sands by 43 per cent. It’s not interested in Catherine McKenna’s proclamation that the government will protect marine mammal habitat as it expands its LNG footprint.

Math and physics are the worst possible negotiating partners—they just stare blankly at you and carry on. Even if you’ve gotten some environmentalists to vouch for your good intent. Even if you produce a string of clever tweets. Even if you take off your shirt.”

Tom

The plants, bugs and fish know it’s already too hot. It’s not about people adapting – it’s about the fact that the rest of the species we rely on to survive – including plants, bugs and fish – can’t adapt fast enough.

Greg

June

Note the last paragraph that it has been ignored by politicians and mainstream press. Sound familiar? James Hansen is being criticized for releasing his paper prior to being peer-reviewed, and doing it in relation to a court case, but in the face of the continued global resistance to making the radical changes necessary, even when impacts are becoming more and more severe, I think he is absolutely right.

Climate Change Worsens NE Brazil’s Drought

The latest drought, which began in 2012 and has lasted five years, is the worst for over a century.

Crops have withered, cattle are dying, and over 700 cities and towns have declared states of emergency. Besides agriculture, industry and hydroelectric power generation are also affected as evaporation lowers the water levels in the reservoirs and lakes.

This alarming but very possible scenario is almost completely ignored by politicians, who over the decades have used the droughts to further their own careers…Even the fact that the climate scientists describe the present drought as of “an intensity and impact not seen for many decades” has failed to make it newsworthy in Brazil’s mainstream press.

To be fair, Estado de São Paulo, one of Brasil´s top 3 newspapers had an editorial about this last week (how climate change is affecting the Northeast drought, not Hansen´s article).

But today, the move to divest from coal and natural gas eletricity I´ve mentioned bellow was described by Folha de São Paulo (another of Brasil´s top 3 newspapers… the third would be “O Globo”) as a “bad decision that will make eletricity more expensive”.

Tradicionally, “Estado de São Paulo” is seem as “right wing” here and “Folha” as “left wing”… somewhen in the last 13 years that changed badly, and I´m cancelling my Folha de São Paulo subscription tomorrow (I was to late to do it today).

Cate

RS, would it be possible to have a bit of context for this, please? This is legit research, correct? Can you give a broader background, if possible, so that we can gauge the significance of this research?

Side note—-the translation slips a bit in places, but hey, their English is a hell of a lot better than my Russian.🙂

Griffin

Interesting article. As is common with the Siberian Times, it is difficult to tell new info from old. Some of the quotes jump out at me as being old. Again, here in the age of the ubiquitous camera, we would sure benefit from a good photo of one of the plumes that they have asserted as leaking to the atmosphere. Methane seeps are common. Methane seeps that expel enough gas to have an abundant amount reach the sea surface are not common. Having a photo of a bubbling sea a kilometer across would be scientifically significant.
I find this situation to be remarkably similar to the craters in the Yamal. It is a mind-blowingly interesting subject and it will get me to read about it every time. But as far as a real, hard, scientifically proven explanation of what the current situation is, it is tough to get good info.
I am sure that we will stay tuned to the release of the findings in November though!

Cate

Griff, you’ve covered all my misgivings—I won’t say doubts, not that strong–about these Russian reports. It might be just the translation—there’s a quality of strangeness. But I’ve also marked my calendar to keep an eye out for that November conference.

Cate

June, thanks for that link–what a great summary of a very exciting season. I think the consensus is that 2016 melt could have blown past all records if the weather in July had been more, well, summer-like. All hands on tenterhooks now, looking ahead to what 2017 may bring. This will be my first winter watching freezing season and hangin’ at the ASIF—highly recommended, btw.😀

Suzanne

Just checking in for a quick hello..and asking you to keep those of us now in the Hurricane Watch zone in Florida…in your thoughts. I could hardly go to sleep last night thinking about all those poor people in Haiti…living in deplorable conditions, having to ride out that storm.
So, trust me when I say…I feel very grateful to live in a sturdy home…but am still feeling a bit of anxiety realizing all the power of Mother Nature…about to come knocking on my door.

wili

How near are you to the coast? It looks like it’s going to be approaching the central coast of Florida just as the high tide is hitting during a full moon. That could be very bad for a lot of coastal areas, especially if it stays a cat 4 monster and hovers quite close to shore.
Stay safe!!

wili

Suzanne

Wili….I am 8 miles from the ocean…in Jupiter Fl..which is where you see FL kind of stick out a bit. We are the northern most town in Palm Beach County. We have a lot of waterways…the intracoastal waterway…and the Loxahatchee River (which a portion of is literally a block a way). However, we are not in a evacuation zone. I am sure it will be fine. Though we have a ton of trees on our property..which I will be nervous about.
Anyway…back to hurricane chores. Keep positive thoughts..

Trump got as many deferments from Vietnam as Dick “Shotgun” Cheney? Somehow that figures. Two vicious sociopaths think alike.

My Peace & Freedom Party activist stepmom kept getting letters from my uncle (no deferment) saying don’t go under any circumstances. He got killed. A few years later a ‘report for physical’ arrived…but I wasn’t a member of the leisure class and poor surfer kids were always 1A, so it was sent back as moved no forwarding address. Student standby ticket and a surfboard to Hawai’i. The draft ended the next year. Never did get that physical.

Drafted into the military were slaves to the killing machine; now it’s an economic draft. No different, still the same economic class doing the killing and the dying in aggressive US invasions that make the leisure class richer. History does too repeat.

*RS: So you are thinking that if Hurricane Matthew wipes out a city, drowns Miami Beach maybe and washes it away, you don’t think that will make a bit of difference? Chalk it up to god’s will or maybe blame the gays that caused it (again), or perhaps it was Planned Parenthood shouts the mad christian preachers (again). So what will it take to wake up? How many dead? Ten thousand, 500 thousand, a million dead at one time from one single storm? Or the complete destruction of Washington DC that sits in a sea-level swamp river delta open to the ocean? Can NOTHING open the blind eyes? That’s freaking scary.

*RS: Scripps has documented the oceans boiling as have Russian research ships. Pictures and videos, and the last I saw it was a full kilometer of boiling ocean water one of the Russian(?) ships was going through. I don’t have the links.

*CB: Nixon gave us Kissinger (whom Hillary loves), Schlesinger, Cheney, Wolfowitz, but the Clinton’s gave us Chelsea Clinton, the mentally-challenged offspring of a power mad couple with the blood of millions on their hands, who believes that pot is the real killer. Quote: “We also have anecdotal evidence now from Colorado where some of the people who were taking marijuana for those purposes [chemotherapy, epilepsy, autism], the coroner believes, after they died, there was drug interactions with other things they were taking.” If only Bill had inhaled…

*June: And now Brazil right wing indicted criminals have coup’d the leftie Dilma and installed neo-liberal policies. Bad to worse.

Weather today: It’s raining here in the Selkirks which is good. Not good is the Jeff Master’s prediction of record warmth coming back next week right into November. Ain’t gonna be snowing obviously.

Quote for the day:

“Once a government is committed to the principle of silencing the voice of opposition, it has only one way to go, and that is down the path of increasingly repressive measures, until it becomes a source of terror to all its citizens and creates a country where everyone lives in fear.”

[Special Message to the Congress on the Internal Security of the United States, August 8, 1950] ― Harry Truman

“June: And now Brazil right wing indicted criminals have coup’d the leftie Dilma and installed neo-liberal policies. Bad to worse. ” –> Please see the comment below as an answer to yours. Dilma liked to say that she was a leftie, but she was just a crook.

Off topic, but in earlier threads some have feared that Brasil had been throught a political coup, as the impeachment rules in our country aren´t well known, and Dilma, Lula and PT´s slogan machine is sucessfully divulging lies abroad. In those earlier threads I explained that impeachment is a legal act here in Brasil, written in the Constitution, that Michael Temer is simply Dilma´s vice-president, so it´s not a coup for him to assume the presidency if she´s found guilty of crimes, and that she was, indeed, found guilty of crimes.

My opinion isn´t that of all of Brasil, of course. But we did have elections last sunday (municipal elections, not federal ones. Federal elections are due in 2018), and it´s possible to gauge Brasil´s opinion in the matter by the elections results.

I forecasted in those prior comments that Dilma´s party, PT (whose politicians are being investigated in a lot of corruption charges. This is not PT´s monopoly, but as the main government party for 13 years they´re scooping the brunt of those charges) would lose half of their mayor offices in these elections. I was wrong. PT lost 60% of their mayor offices. In 4.948 cities in the country, PT managed to elect only 204 mayors. They have candidates running for 7 more cities, which are going to have a second vote… in elections in Brasil, there´s a first vote, with candidates of several parties (there´s 35 parties here) and if no candidate reachs 50%+1 votes, there´s a second vote, only with the two most voted candidates. So one can vote with their consciences in the first vote, and vote in the lesser evil in the second one. Even if PT scores the 7 remaining cities where it´s running for the 2nd vote (unlikely), though, their results are a pittance against its history, showing how unpopular the party is now.

In less off topic news, our current president Michael Temer just changed a “minute” policy, that brings lots of results. Our governamental investment bank, BNDES, is from now on forbidden to invest in coal and natural gas eletricity. That doesn´t divest all governmental subsidies for coal and gas eletricity right now (BNDES still has a few contracts that it will need to uphold, made in prior governments), but in medium term, equates to that.

JPL

Eric Thurston

Just a minor, and possibly a bit pedantic point re how hurricanes operate. We typically describe a hurricane as “feeding on the ocean’s heat”. As I understand it from a thermodynamic perspective, what ‘feeds’ the hurricane is the difference in available heat between the ocean and the atmosphere. A hurricane could be described as a dissipative structure that is working to destroy the energy gradient between the ocean and the atmosphere at a particular place. This is a process similar to the dipoles (writ large compared to a storm or hurricane) that Robert writes about that are causing such weather wierding all over the planet.

I’m in the middle of a book on thermodynamics titled ‘Into the Cool’ by Eric Schneider and Dorion Sagan. I highly recommend it. A basic understanding of thermodynamics helps tremendously in understanding the weather and the larger picture of the climate.

Despite California lifting mandatory statewide water restrictions earlier this year, 60 percent of the state is still in a severe or extreme drought.

The recently concluded water year, which is used to measure precipitation totals, was officially classified as dry across the state even though parts of Northern California experienced average to slightly above-average precipitation in the past year, according to a California Department of Water Resources, or CDWR, press release. The water year begins Oct. 1 and ends Sept. 30, because part of the precipitation accumulating as snow in late fall and winter does not melt until the following spring or summer.

The end of the recent water year marks the fifth consecutive drought year for the state, said CDWR spokesperson Doug Carlson.

Genomik

I feel like the movie “They Live” where they put the sunglasses on and see aliens only in this case I see California’s ecology decimating and few other do.

EBMUD and all the other water districts that stopped mandatory rationing saying there is a break in the drought only it’s not a drought, it’s the new new climate normal.

In oakland the water quality has already changed as the tap water went from a normal 70ppm to 140ppm as they are pulling well water out to mix which I expect to be the new normal. So as the water from the mountains lowers and more well water is used the quality degrades as well. This is subtle but a direct effect on millions, less, lower quality water.

In the northern hemisphere’s winter of 2013-2014 an unusual patch of warm water appeared in the northern Pacific ocean. Scientists dubbed it “the blob” and it persisted over the region until this year.

The researchers studied an algae called P. australis which made up most of the deadly bloom. What they found was that warm water makes these cells grow two or three times faster than normal. Under the right conditions they can produce a toxin called Domoic acid which builds up in shellfish that filter sea water, and moves steadily up the food chain becoming more and more dangerous.

The toxin can cause gastrointestinal distress, seizures, memory loss and even death when too much of it gets into the bloodstream of everything from dolphins to sea lions to humans. And in the case of the 2015 bloom, NOAA recorded “…the largest geographic extent of marine mammal impacts ever recorded.” The impact ranged from poisoned crabs, to convulsing sea lions, and the forced closure of a giant swath of fisheries reaching from Los Angeles to Seattle.http://www.voanews.com/a/toxic-algae-and-the-blob/3535242.html

Greg

Greg

How is AI impacting us now? I’ve noticed huge improvement and spread of voice recognition and sure enough AI has been the influencing technology. Figure its going to show up more and more in climate work as physical modeling has its limits and there is a tremendous amount of data available to mine:

June

Greg

Greg

Dr. Master’s latest entry on Hurricane Matthew. Quote below regarding Bahamas:
“Many areas in this archipelago contain broad reefs that provide large pools of shallow water for hurricanes to displace and inflict storm surge damage. The impacts of these surges are often severe, sea water can overwash small islands, completely inundating them with salt. Such surges often destroy fresh water and food supplies, as saline soils can take years to lose high salt content.”https://www.wunderground.com/blog/JeffMasters/hurricane-matthew-reorganizing-over-the-bahamas-major-shift-in-longr

Cate

“The study looked at data from satellites and ocean sensors off Miami that have tracked what’s known as the Atlantic overturning circulation for more than a decade. Together they show a definite slowdown since 2004, confirming a trend suspected before then from spottier data.”

As for the cause, they don’t think it’s freshening water from all the glacial melt. Rather, they suspect an atmospheric factor—-probably a change in the Southern Ocean winds.

“I think it changes how we think about the whole Atlantic overturning circulation, of which the Gulf Stream is a part,” said co-author LuAnne Thompson, a UW professor of oceanography. “It brings back the role of the atmosphere into what’s controlling the climate in the high latitudes, that it’s not all driven by what’s happening in the oceans.”

Greg

Storm Surge!
Picture taken on October 5, 2016 showing the state in which a road between Guantanamo and Baracoa was left after the passage of Hurricane Matthew through the eastern tip of Cuba on Tuesday afternoon. Hurricane Matthew, the Caribbean’s worst storm in nearly a decade, barreled towards the Bahamas Wednesday morning after killing nine people and pummeling Haiti and Cuba. (YAMIL LAGE/AFP/Getty Images)

Cate

23C here today. July temps—even at night, clear with no frost. We’ve had a week of it already, and it’s forecast to last through the weekend. Massive blocking high over the Atlantic it seems? Going to drive Matthew round the bend.

Greg

June

Near-real-time updates (which are preliminary) indicate that at this year’s minimum, only 106,000 square kilometers (41,000 square miles) of 4+ year old ice remained, or 3.1 percent of the total ice extent. This is in stark contrast to the mid-1980s when over 2 million square kilometers (33 percent, or 772,000 square miles) of the summer minimum extent was composed of old ice that had survived at least four summer melt seasons.

Cate

Horrific numbers that make my stomach turn. Once the MYI is gone, it’s probably not coming back anytime soon. Old ice, which carries over from one year to the next and remains all summer long, has functioned as a planetary temperature regulator since the last ice age, reflecting the summer sunshine and keeping the Arctic cool—-and the planet liveable. Once it’s open water—-dark blue seas—-up there for two, four, even six months of the year, we are in for huge unpleasantness.

John S

I appreciate your understated language …”not anytime soon” – that’d be the next glaciation phase of the next ice-age no? which to low-pay-grade seems to be the next Milankovitch cycle if we can cool down enough to catch it (110k years-ish okay?). Next chance 220k years from now give or take a bit, if we’re still too hot for that one then things are somewhere between dire and completely stuffed. Just need to get co2 below 200 for 100-250 thousand years, rejuvenate the MYI.

Also it is heart wrenching when you consider the timeline – in the 80’s we were in with a real good chance to turn the behemoth, except for a truly despicable cabal of certain captains of industry, who have betrayed us all.

Then when words fail me, you come out with “huge unpleasantness” – that’d be a great byline for an Al, Leonardo (or Matt) movie.

Jeremy in Wales

The closure of coal mines and coal fired power stations in the UK and hopefully the world over ,should be welcomed and celebrated not just for the reduced CO2 and other reduced pollutants but for the reduced harm to people directly. City dwellers have little appreciation of the sacrifices made for their way of life.
My father-in-law was a miner and it is only in his latter years that I have discovered that he had witnessed the death of his friend involving a conveyor deep underground. That he had black scars on his back where blocks of rock had fallen on his bare back while digging at a coal face with a pick. That was one mans pain, luckily for him he escaped that claustrophobic world.
I have known people locally who remembered and had relatives killed in the Gresford pit disaster of 1934 when 266 people were killed. Those memories are passing into history.
I remember coming home from school as a small boy 50 years ago to find my grandmother crying because of TV reports of a tip falling on a school wiping out 144 (116 children). It was only 14 miles from where I lived and the black scar running down the mountain was visible for years.
Mining was an honourable and frightening job, coal communities were inspiring with choirs, brass bands and self taught men and women. The industry cared little for the people. The passing of the coal age should be encouraged, celebrated and dealt with as fast as possible.https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aberfan_disaster

Thanks for these wise sentiments and for sharing your very real and valued past, Jeremy. I think anyone who’s lived as a coal miner could certainly hope for better, cleaner less dangerous energy work. From the miner to the polar bear to those suffering from lung and heart diseases in smoke clogged cities — the coal has scarred us all.